If you were trying to convey this whole “falling in love” thing to me, while I’m suspicious about whether it exists or that if it exists that it has any value, and I were pressing you for “cake” about “falling in love”, what would you offer?
This is a reasonable enough question, as I said, but it does bear noting that it’s not like I’ve actually written any posts about how great “falling in love” is and how people should try doing it, etc. (I’m not even sure I would actually advocate for falling in love, if you asked me whether I think that you should try to do it, and were skeptical about it!)
Now, you asked what I’d offer if I were trying to convey “falling in love” and were asked for “cake” (i.e., answers to “what’s it good for?”), and I answered “here’s what I’d offer”. That response wasn’t very substantive! To abuse the metaphor somewhat, if we imagine our metaphorical cake as, say, tiramisu, my response would be, perhaps, a single ladyfinger dipped in coffee liqueur, with a dollop of whipped cream on it—not really a whole cake, with all the ingredients in place, fully assembled and finished with all the details, but more like a proof-of-concept, establishing that the basic idea works and is essentially sensible. (You could also call it a sketch rather than a finished portrait, or use any number of similar metaphors.)
That having been said, let’s move to the non-metaphorical object level:
I thought you were looking for tangible proof of benefits, or something you could concretely try, or something like that. But now I know I have no idea what you’re looking for!
Tangible proof of benefits is good, but concrete description of benefits is the thing that’s got to come first. Otherwise, what’s being proven?
As far as “something to concretely try”, please note that this is basically of no value unless either (a) I can have some reasonable expectations for what sort of thing I’ll get if I try it, or (b) trying is costless or close to it. Otherwise, it’s little more than a bluff.
I could say that falling in love is worthwhile for its own sake. Of course, there isn’t any way I could convince you of that, but that’s not unusual; the same applies to the experience of eating ice cream, etc. This boils down to “try it; you’ll like it!”.
I seem to recall saying very similar things about kenshō. That there’s something of deep importance, that this “insight” amounts to acknowledging it, that this is something you’d be super grateful for if it were to happen for you, and that there’s not really much of a way for me to convince you of any of this. It’s just a “Take a look and see for yourself” kind of thing.
That doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. You still asked for “cake”.
Well, indeed. As I said, there isn’t any way I could convince you that love is worthwhile for its own sake if you didn’t already believe it. Nor should you be convinced! You would be quite right to disbelieve me! (Especially because if you didn’t believe that there’s any value to falling in love, that would be evidence that you are the the sort of person for whom there isn’t any value to falling in love.)
There’s two things to note here.
One is that you’ve certainly claimed all sorts of benefits to kenshō, so “worthwhile for its own sake” isn’t all that’s being claimed; if it were, we’d have had (and would be having) a very different conversation.
The other is that the ice cream example is illustrative. Trying ice cream is something you can do for trivial amounts of money and effort, and which has basically no downsides (assuming you’ve checked the ice cream’s ingredients for known allergens you’re sensitive to, etc.). Notice that most people (quite reasonably) still don’t try everything that they could try with comparably little effort/cost expenditure, simply because there’s so many such things! But if a thing in this category is brought to your attention, by someone whose word you have at least some minimal reason not to distrust—well, why not, right? It’s costs so little.
It hardly needs pointing out that this is absolutely not the case for falling in love… and still less so for kenshō.
falling in love is just the first part of a process which (summed across all instances over a person’s lifetime) is likely to account for a significant chunk of the happiness, life satisfaction, joy, pleasure, etc., that one experiences in one’s lifetime.
Just so! Which is why my answer was a sketch of the sorts of things I would say if I were trying to convince you of the value of “falling in love”. If I were trying to construct the finished portrait, so to speak, I’d have to go into considerably more detail, offer actual examples and specific accounts, etc., etc.
And that’s the problem with the rest of what you write here: it’s “allusions to…”, but where are the specifics?
Here’s another approach: on the old Kensho post, our discussion broke off with a couple of my comments having been left unanswered. One very relevant comment was this one, where I ask for specifics about a number of vague things you wrote in a previous comment. Perhaps you could give those specifics now?
Well, let’s recap a bit. You wrote:
This is a reasonable enough question, as I said, but it does bear noting that it’s not like I’ve actually written any posts about how great “falling in love” is and how people should try doing it, etc. (I’m not even sure I would actually advocate for falling in love, if you asked me whether I think that you should try to do it, and were skeptical about it!)
Now, you asked what I’d offer if I were trying to convey “falling in love” and were asked for “cake” (i.e., answers to “what’s it good for?”), and I answered “here’s what I’d offer”. That response wasn’t very substantive! To abuse the metaphor somewhat, if we imagine our metaphorical cake as, say, tiramisu, my response would be, perhaps, a single ladyfinger dipped in coffee liqueur, with a dollop of whipped cream on it—not really a whole cake, with all the ingredients in place, fully assembled and finished with all the details, but more like a proof-of-concept, establishing that the basic idea works and is essentially sensible. (You could also call it a sketch rather than a finished portrait, or use any number of similar metaphors.)
That having been said, let’s move to the non-metaphorical object level:
Tangible proof of benefits is good, but concrete description of benefits is the thing that’s got to come first. Otherwise, what’s being proven?
As far as “something to concretely try”, please note that this is basically of no value unless either (a) I can have some reasonable expectations for what sort of thing I’ll get if I try it, or (b) trying is costless or close to it. Otherwise, it’s little more than a bluff.
Well, indeed. As I said, there isn’t any way I could convince you that love is worthwhile for its own sake if you didn’t already believe it. Nor should you be convinced! You would be quite right to disbelieve me! (Especially because if you didn’t believe that there’s any value to falling in love, that would be evidence that you are the the sort of person for whom there isn’t any value to falling in love.)
There’s two things to note here.
One is that you’ve certainly claimed all sorts of benefits to kenshō, so “worthwhile for its own sake” isn’t all that’s being claimed; if it were, we’d have had (and would be having) a very different conversation.
The other is that the ice cream example is illustrative. Trying ice cream is something you can do for trivial amounts of money and effort, and which has basically no downsides (assuming you’ve checked the ice cream’s ingredients for known allergens you’re sensitive to, etc.). Notice that most people (quite reasonably) still don’t try everything that they could try with comparably little effort/cost expenditure, simply because there’s so many such things! But if a thing in this category is brought to your attention, by someone whose word you have at least some minimal reason not to distrust—well, why not, right? It’s costs so little.
It hardly needs pointing out that this is absolutely not the case for falling in love… and still less so for kenshō.
Just so! Which is why my answer was a sketch of the sorts of things I would say if I were trying to convince you of the value of “falling in love”. If I were trying to construct the finished portrait, so to speak, I’d have to go into considerably more detail, offer actual examples and specific accounts, etc., etc.
And that’s the problem with the rest of what you write here: it’s “allusions to…”, but where are the specifics?
Here’s another approach: on the old Kensho post, our discussion broke off with a couple of my comments having been left unanswered. One very relevant comment was this one, where I ask for specifics about a number of vague things you wrote in a previous comment. Perhaps you could give those specifics now?